The worldwide cloud infrastructure services market performed strongly in Q3 2017, growing 43% year on year to reach US$14.4 billion. The four largest cloud service providers all maintained their momentum and expanded their combined share to 57% of the total market. Amazon AWS kept growing, with its revenue up 42% year on year. But Microsoft (up 90%) and Google (up 76%) grew more impressively, closing the gap on AWS. IBM also gained traction, driven by its strong base of large global customers.

“The leading cloud service providers’ hyperscale investment in both technical capabilities and geographic coverage continues to help them expand rapidly,” said Daniel Liu, Research Analyst at Canalys. “AWS will continue to benefit from its first-mover advantage, broadest cloud services portfolio and strong awareness among developers. But Microsoft’s substantial growth, driven by its huge enterprise installed base, compatibility with its Office portfolio and enhanced hybrid cloud solutions, means it will remain AWS’ closest competitor,” said Liu.

“The growing adoption of cloud for digital workloads around artificial intelligence, IoT and edge computing will catalyze the next wave of market growth. This will also become the key factor in determining cloud players’ future momentum,” Liu added.

By geography, North America remained the largest market, accounting for 55% of the worldwide total. It was followed by EMEA, which represented 23% of the market, compared with 18% for APAC and 4% for Latin America. For full-year 2017, Canalys forecasts the worldwide market will grow 43% to hit US$54.4 billion.